Carlos Gonzalez, the Rockies’ all-star left fielder, could be out of the lineup for five weeks, athletic trainer Keith Dugger said Wednesday.

A surgeon in Cleveland removed what could be a tumor Tuesday from Gonzalez’s left index finger. Dugger said a biopsy is being run on the growth, and the test results should be back by the end of the week.

“It’s like a fatty mass with tentacles coming out,” Dugger said of the removed growth.

After Gonzalez’s finger swelled up too big to wear a batting glove for a third time this season, Dugger said something was necessary.

“This is a giant-cell tumor,” Dugger said. “It sounds scarier than it is. … It had some branches off this little, fatty mass that just didn’t look right.”

Dugger estimated Gonzalez would be out until late July, but he left open the possibility of an earlier return.

“A timetable? Honestly I don’t know,” Dugger said. “The guesstimate, I would say, is it’s going to be about five weeks. If it’s sooner than that, great. Even Dr. (Thomas) Graham said that. He’s had patients do better and he’s had patients back in 2½ weeks.”

The Rockies were hesitant to have Gonzalez undergo exploratory surgery because of the procedure’s invasive nature. But Dugger said he’s now glad the operation was performed, even though it required 20 sutures to close the finger.

“This was going to be a recurring type of thing,” Dugger said. “When we did the first MRI, we knew something was in there. But sometimes, just because you find something in there, it doesn’t mean you do surgery, because sometimes when you go in there, you can cause more scarring or trauma to the area than what was actually causing it.”

Pitchers on the mend. Right-hander Tyler Chatwood (strained elbow tendon) and lefty Brett Anderson (fractured left index finger) are scheduled to pitch their rehab bullpens Friday when the Rockies travel to San Francisco.

“They are both doing very, very well,” Dugger said. “They are throwing fastballs and change- ups and just starting to throw some sliders and curveballs on flat ground.”

Chacin’s consecutive no-decisions in his past two games were an improvement after he started the season with four losses in May. And his last start — a three-run, six-hit effort against the Los Angeles Dodgers — kept the Rockies close enough for Brandon Barnes’ game-winning triple in the 10th. Chacin in that game walked three and struck out four — moving him to 496 career strikeouts. With four more strikeouts, he would join six other Rockies past the 500 mark (Ubaldo Jimenez, Pedro Astacio, Jeff Francis, Jorge De La Rosa, Jason Jennings and Aaron Cook).

covers the Broncos and the NFL, baseball and the Rockies, and all sorts of sports. He started working at The Denver Post while in high school, in 1997, before graduating from the University of Colorado. Reach him at ngroke@denverpost.com

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